Hey Cyclists, Electric Scooters Are Not the Enemy

It’s official: Cyclists have been demoted to the second-most hated people on the road. After a 200-year run as the ultimate transportation pariahs, bikes have been displaced in the cellar of public opinion by electric scooters. Thanks to well-funded companies like Lime and Bird, the streets (and sidewalks) of many U.S. cities have become filled with e-scooters, which users can unlock with their phones, ride around, and then leave pretty much wherever they want, much like a dockless bike-share scheme.

Many do love the scooters, as hundreds of thousands of people have already used them to get around towns like Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and Austin, Texas. But many others hate the scooters, criticizing them as ugly, dangerous, and even unlawful. Some cities (ranging from Seattle to Nags Head, North Carolina) have responded by banning or limiting the distribution of e-scooters. Most recently, the backlash reached a fever pitch as a class-action suit was filed in California against leading scooter companies on behalf of pedestrians who say they were hit and injured by riders.

The bike community is too large and diverse to have one voice, but I’ve heard a loud chorus of groaning about e-scooters from cyclists. Bike advocates have spent decades fighting to secure bike lanes and other safe places for human-powered vehicles to ride. Suddenly, those lanes are full of people on motorized gizmos zipping around in business-casual attire? Cyclists and others have complained that scooter riders are unpredictable or unskilled—that they move too fast or too slow, that they endanger people on the sidewalks or street.

Of course, these are things that people have said about cyclists since the bicycle was invented. The ancestor of the modern bicycle—called the draisine in Germany, the velocipede or draisienne in France, and the hobby horse or dandy horse in England—caused an eerily similar backlash in the 1820s. Within a few years of their arrival on city streets, the two-wheeled sensations had been banned in Milan, London, Paris, New York, and Philadelphia. Two centuries later, many still criticize cyclists as naughty, unpredictable, and dangerous. We’ve heard this all before.

But rather than eye scooter users as dangerous, disruptive competitors for road space, cyclists should instead rally around these new riders as allies. We have so much more in common than we have dividing us.

Cyclists can and should rally around e-scooter riders.

Mario TamaGetty Images

I won’t dispute that e-scooter crashes do happen and that improvements in engineering, rider training, and regulation will help make streets safer. But cyclists, of all people, should recognize that the hysteria over scooters is not rational—that the frequency and severity of these incidents is infinitesimal compared to the carnage caused by motor vehicles.

Cyclists know, for instance, that very few pedestrians are killed in bike crashes, whereas car crashes take thousands of lives. Yet when this unlucky rarity occurs, even our most trusted journalistic institutions react as though renegade bikers present a legitimate public-health crisis. As fellow marginalized and vulnerable road users, cyclists should sympathize with the way e-scooters are being misrepresented.

Rather than tussle over slivers of pavement, cyclists and scooter riders (and pedestrians) should work together to create more shared, safe streets in every American community. Many of our city streets seem fundamentally broken—unnecessarily dangerous, clogged with soul-crushing traffic, designed more like miniature freeways than public spaces for everyone.

Those worried about climate change, oil dependency, and noise pollution should know that micro-mobility poses a potential solution to all these problems. I believe the bicycle is a miraculous invention that can help transform our cities. But for some people, e-scooters (or some other gadget that hasn’t been dreamed up yet) are a better option. Giving people a realistic alternative to the car and supporting multiple efficient, safe, and less gluttonous transportation modes will make the roads better for us all.

This hopeful idea was backed up by a recent study conducted in Portland, Oregon, based on survey responses from 4,500 scooter users there. Amazingly, 34 percent of locals (and 48 percent of tourists) said their scooter rides replaced trips for which they would have otherwise used a car. And more than two-thirds of all respondents said they’d never used a bike lane in Portland before riding a scooter.

One way to look at that is to imagine tons of newbies weaving around in bike lanes. But another is to see an entirely new demographic getting a first-hand tutorial on the value of good infrastructure.

Early evidence suggests people will use e-scooter rides to replace car trips.

Valery SharifulinGetty Images

I recognize that behind e-scooters are private companies funded by powerful forces that, above all, want to make a buck. Just as with dockless bike share—which has experienced some success and some failure in the U.S.—complaints about perceived “clutter” have arisen in many communities. (As a resident of Los Angeles County, which has more than 19 million parking spaces, I have to laugh at gripes about scooter clutter.) I have concerns about the amount of waste scooters will generate in the near term. I have collided with a scooter myself, and I believe they can be better engineered for safety. We need smart regulation, not uninformed panic.

The practical benefits of an alliance with the companies that make and rent electric scooters—as well as with the people who ride them—could be enormous. Imagine the massive political and financial leverage scooter companies can exert to build new or improved bike lanes. Imagine the broad cultural impact of having millions of people who don’t ride bikes get on scooters and finally realize the importance of building safer streets—and maybe rethink their apathy or hostility toward cyclists.

The scooter riders of 2018 are just like the velocipede riders of 1818, who like cyclists today were just trying to get around and have fun without hurting anyone. Cyclists shouldn’t ask if scooters are stealing our hard-won space. Instead, the question should be how we can work together to make our cities safer and more livable.

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